New Eyes

“This isn’t what I was expecting at all,” Chuck said, glancing either side of him. He tapped the shoulder of the woman in front of him who already looked like she'd been waiting in line for years, which at this pace, might happen to him as well. "Excuse Madame, this is Hell - I didn't take the wrong turn at Disney Land, right?"

His quick and witty humour is what led him here in the first place. After getting a bit too friendly with one of the gang leaders in prison, they must've slit his throat open while he was sleeping. It was the only reasonable explanation. That, and a piece of his neck was missing. But surprisingly, out of everyone standing in line, he looked the most normal. Including the woman he was speaking to, who turned towards him with no eyes.

"Are you some sort of fucking idiot?" She grumbled begrudgingly. "I can't tell you how long I've been standing here for. It's gonna be any day now the real torment begins!"

Chuck looked ahead of him to see the line curve over muddy hills, stretch over plains of the damned, and get lost in the dark and smoky horizon people call the final destination. He smiled. "Boy, am I glad I'm not at the front of this line," he laughed.

The woman remained unimpressed, but also confused. "How are you laughing? We're going to burn in hell!"

"You, my new friend for the next thousand years, need a new pair of eyes. Here, take mine."

They popped out of his sockets like golf balls as he pried them out with the sharp ends of his bitten nails. Surprisingly, it wasn't all that painful. Maybe it was because he's dead... But seeing as there was no further use for his eyes, he happily gave them over to the lady before him. While he might've been a scumbag while he was still alive, he was just doing what he had to do to survive. Seeing as there wasn't a point in being selfish anymore, he happily gave in to charity and donated what little he had left to the woman who, by the looks of it, needed it more.

"These aren't your balls, right?" She uttered, with what Chuck could only presume was a disgusted look. She held the two spheres in her hand, hesitantly.

"I can assure you, mine are much smaller than those," Chuck replied.

The swap had been made. The lady could see. Chuck could not. She looked over the sea of heads in front of them and wailed in relief, "Thank God for lines!"

"See, not so bad," Chuck cheerily responded.

"I can see! I can see!" She looked around. Slowly, the smile disappeared. "Oh yeah, I nearly forgot we're still going to burn for the rest of eternity."

"Don't look at it that way," Chuck said. "You said it yourself, the line only moves every ten years. Seems like to me they're running out of space."

"Oh, darling, was it the stupidity that killed you or was it insanity?"

"A bit of both, I'm proud to say."

The lady let out a short, chuff of dry air through her nostrils like a shotgun. Chuck couldn't figure out if it was meant to be a laugh or a sneeze. He said 'Bless you' anyway.

There was no telling how long they stood in line for as it shuffled forwards slowly every few years. In that time, Chuck got to know this lady well enough to call her family. Her name was Nora. They told each other how they died. How they lived. What they regret. Not once while waiting for their inevitable demise did they lose the words to speak to each other. It was strange, but to Chuck, time flew by as they edged closer to Hell.

In their final moments before knowing nothing but pain, Chuck finally understood what that old saying meant: It's not the destination. It's the journey. Nora was next in line. Her time had come. She turned to Chuck. Although he couldn't see Nora's face, she was smiling anyway, perhaps the first person in Hell to do so. Before she entered the grim gateway which led to their eternal imprisonment, she looked up at Chuck and said, "Thanks' for the company, and thanks for the new eyes."